I had the pleasure of speaking with Seth Robinson, the Senior Director of Technology Analysis at CompTIA. We discussed their recent research report “Building Digital Organization”. Our discussion centered on the effect that Digital Transformation (DX), cloud computing and mobility is having on the IT function and the organizations they serve.

He went on to say that “DX isn’t only about technology. It’s also a deeper change within the business processes themselves as they are transformed through the use of digital technologies.”

We then discussed how DX, cloud and mobility is also causing IT to evolve. As always, IT should play both a tactical and a strategic role within the company. Tactically, IT must continue to keep the production systems up and running, costs within a reasonable range, move the company’s technological platform forward as necessity requires. Strategically, IT must work with its business partners to pick the best technologies to move the company forward, not only from a technical perspective, but also from a business perspective, causing IT to become more business knowledgeable and business savvy.

When managers analyze the relative importance of the people within their group, they generally consider a number of factors.

These factors include:

Technical knowledge as it relates to the department’s responsibilities

Flexibility to perform multiple departmental tasks

Quality of the work performed

Ability to get along with other employees within the company

Willingness to learn new things and perform new tasks

Can-do positive attitude

Strong work ethic

Speed at which tasks can be completed

While all of the employee attributes are of great importance, I’d like to specifically discuss the last bullet point, speed at which tasks can be completed. This attribute is important for a number of reasons. First, as you may expect, it allows you to get more work done. Logic dictates that if you can complete twice as many tasks as your fellow employees, all other things being equal, you are worth twice as much to your manager. No, that doesn’t mean you’ll get twice the pay, but it does mean that your manager will most likely be willing to pay you a premium for your high degree of output.

In my last blog, I described five types of personal online libraries you could create that would enhance your productivity while sitting alone at your desk. In today’s blog, I’m continuing with the productivity theme and outline four ways you can enhance your efficiency while working with others.

Meeting Batching:
While attending meetings are certainly a required part of the job, as a Business Analyst (BA), your performance is ultimately judged on your ability to create meaningful and well written documents that clearly define a project’s scope, value to the organization, and/or business requirements. Therefore, it’s to your professional advantage to have blocks of time within your work schedule to get these documents written. The concept of meeting batching is to schedule all your meetings in clusters, within the same day or within the same parts of day, thus leaving you these blocks of time to get your work done.

As a Business Analyst, the speed and effectiveness by which you can create documents, send emails, create presentations and research new topics has a direct relationship to your overall work performance.

The reason is that the less time you spend sitting and writing, the more time you can spend collecting user requirements, meeting with senior management, working with the programmers and testers, and performing other job related tasks.

Creating the five online libraries listed below can help you maximize your productivity by accelerating your document creation. This in turn, frees up your time to perform other meaningful activities. The theory is to save everything you think may possibly be of use or reference at a future date and store it in a way that makes it easy to find. Becoming the master of cut and paste can dramatically enhance your efficiency at building new documents, because, over time, as your libraries grow in size, there will be less and less original text you need to write from scratch.

Reader Question: Should I learn Java?

My Answer: Maybe, maybe not.

I often receive questions from readers asking if they should learn a specific technology, such as Java, PL-SQL, HTML, JavaScript and/or other base technology. On a similar vein, I also receive questions asking if they should learn specific application software, such as the Oracle financials, or about major megatrends, such as big data or cloud computing.

On the surface, these questions seem very straight forward, direct and easy to answer. The appropriate answers, however, are very complex, must be individualized and very often have nothing to do with technology. The reason this type of question is so hard to answer is because both yes and no could be the right answer.

Your advice on becoming a Help Desk professional helped me get my job. Now that I’m working, what things should I do to be sure I’m successful in my new role?

My Answer:
First, congratulations on the new job and I wish you much luck and success.

As a new “knowledge worker” type employee in a new profession, you were primarily hired based on your future potential, willingness to work hard and do your best, and your capability to quickly expand your knowledge and skill set.

By the term “knowledge worker”, I’m referring to the type of job that uses your mind as the primary tool, rather than your hands. In the case of Help Desk, you certainly use a combination of both, but for your hands to perform their tasks, your mind must have a deep understanding of the work to be performed.

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5 More Great Ways to Become a Help Desk ProfessionalWed, 18 Mar 2015 04:46:00 -0700Eric BloomEric Bloom

Original Reader Question: I like working on and fixing PCs. How do I get a job as a Help Desk technician?

In last week’s blog, based on the above reader question, I described five activities that can assist you get a Help Desk Job. Based on the number of readers and general discussion it created, I wanted to offer you some additional ideas.

When looking to enter the Help Desk profession, you should take a parallel approach, namely,
expanding your knowledge and building your professional contacts. This week’s blog discusses five ways to expand your knowledge. Next week’s blog, the third in the series, will discuss building your professional contacts, the tactical side of finding a job

Reader Question: I like working on and fixing PCs. How do I get a job as a Help Desk technician?

Thank you for your email. Before answering your question directly, I would like to divide it into two parts; becoming qualified for a Help Desk job and then finding one.

Regarding finding a job, if you have a reasonably strong understanding of PC hardware and software, I would immediately begin looking for an entry level Help Desk job. My reasoning is you may get lucky and find an entry level position requiring relatively low current knowledge, as long as you are willing to be a quick study and begin at a low level of pay. Once hired, you should expect that you will be doing low level work, such as changing printer cartridges and preparing new PCs, laptops, tablets and cell phones for company use. That said, as your skills increase and your professional reputation grows, you will hopefully be given the opportunity to learn new things and perform more advanced tasks.

I often receive emails from readers asking me what technology they should learn, what certification they should attain or what type of job they should take next. A fourth question should be “How can I enhance my interpersonal communication skills?”

I often receive emails from readers asking me what technology they should learn, what certification they should attain or what type of job they should take next. While these are extremely important and worthwhile questions to ask, there is a fourth question that is almost never asked. This question is “How can I enhance my interpersonal communication skills?”

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4 career options for Database Administrators (and how to make the move)Mon, 02 Feb 2015 15:16:00 -0800Eric BloomEric Bloom

Reader Question: I’ve been a production DBA for four years. I love working with data, but would like to grow professionally. What are my potential career options?

Before answering the reader’s question, I’d like to begin by describing the difference between a “Production DBA” and an “Application DBA”. Certainly there are many DBAs that perform both roles as part of their job, but it’s worth describing the distinction between these two types of activities.

An Application DBA works with the Business Analysts and Software Developers to design and/or enhance an application’s database. This is an incredibly important role, because a poorly designed database has the potential to cause poor system performance, redundant data storage, inability to programmatically connect different types of data, and dramatically slow the software development process. To make matters worse, being forced to redesign a poorly constructed database after the software has been written, will most likely require major rewrites of the application software to properly process data on the newly constructed data architecture.

Want to move your career forward more quickly? A mentor could be just what you need.

Discussed in last week’s blog was the difference between a coach and a mentor. There are two types of coaches; a person who teaches you a specific skill or a person who employs a formalized coaching methodology to help the coachee enhance their personal and/or professional situation. Mentoring is the voice of experience, rather than employing the use of learned techniques and best coaching practices. Also, generally speaking, the mentor selects you, you don’t select the mentor.

From a career growth perspective, if you can find the right mentor or mentors, they can help you in a number of ways including the following.

Reader Question: I’m unhappy with my current career progress. Is a paid coach worth the money?

First, thank you for your email. To your question, yes, a paid coach can be well worth the money. The trick is finding the right coach and being willing to do the suggested work. As they say, a plan without the effort of execution is simply a dream.

Your first step in finding the right coach is understanding that there are different types of paid and unpaid coaching. All types of coaches can provide great value. The trick is finding a coach that can meet your needs.

Career coaching generally falls into two categories, tactical and strategic.

Reader question: I was a Java programmer working on financial applications. Now I’m a Project Manager and feel I’m losing my hands-on ability to program. Does becoming a Project Manager make me too much of a generalist?

First, thank you for your question. Like Java programming, the role of Project Manager (PM) can move you toward being either a specialist or generalist, based on the projects you choose (or are required) to work on. Regarding losing your “hands-on” ability to program, yes, if you have stoped programming, your programming skills will diminish. That said, as you lead more and more projects, your skills as a PM will increase. Don’t look at it as simply losing your programming skills, consider it trading off one skill set for another.

Reader Question: I love being in IT, doing technical work and working with business people, but I don’t like programming or writing big requirements documents. Any suggestions on what I can do?

First, thank you for your email and your question. You may want to consider moving to a profession in software testing. Software Testers are the quiet giants of the IT profession and the guardians of software quality.

Software testing requires a combination of knowledge and skill. From a business knowledge perspective, the development of test cases require an understanding of the software’s purpose and how it will be used once it’s deployed for use. On the technical side, a professional tester must also have an understanding of testing-oriented best practices, bug tracking procedures, the software development methodology being employed (most likely Waterfall or Agile), project management and other related disciplines.